Mapping the Americanization of English in space and time

Gonçalves, Bruno; Loureiro‐Porto, Lucía; Ramasco, José J.; Sánchez, David

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0197741

Cited by 76 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…In this respect, it is worth mentioning that the role of a committed minority has been investigated in the context of various multi agent models where it has been shown to play an important role on the final consensus provided its size exceeds a certain threshold [6,[52][53][54], as observed also in recent laboratory experiments [55]. Third, we focused on the case where the competition takes place between two alternative norms, but more complex cases where more conventions concur to the process of norm change could exist [26]. Fourth, the model we introduced describes the process of norm change for an isolated linguistic group and does not address the important case of language change resulting from the contact between two linguistically independent populations or conflict between different languages [7].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The dynamics of norm change in the cultural evolution of language

Amato

Lacasa

Dı́az-Guilera

et al. 2018

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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What happens when a new social convention replaces an old one? While the possible forces favoring norm change-such as institutions or committed activists-have been identified for a long time, little is known about how a population adopts a new convention, due to the difficulties of finding representative data. Here, we address this issue by looking at changes that occurred to 2,541 orthographic and lexical norms in English and Spanish through the analysis of a large corpora of books published between the years 1800 and 2008. We detect three markedly distinct patterns in the data, depending on whether the behavioral change results from the action of a formal institution, an informal authority, or a spontaneous process of unregulated evolution. We propose a simple evolutionary model able to capture all of the observed behaviors, and we show that it reproduces quantitatively the empirical data. This work identifies general mechanisms of norm change, and we anticipate that it will be of interest to researchers investigating the cultural evolution of language and, more broadly, human collective behavior.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The phenomenon of 'Americanization' of English [26] is not limited to spelling but includes also the introduction of different words or expression which over time replaced the British ones. Recent works [26,49]…”

Section: British English Vs American Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

The dynamics of norm change in the cultural evolution of language

Amato

Lacasa

Dı́az-Guilera

et al. 2018

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Human communication systems [linguistic vocalisations (e.g. British English, American English, Singapore English ‘Singlish’, Indian English ‘Hinglish’ and Kenyan English (Pederson, ; Mesthrie & Bhatt, ; Gonçalves et al ., ); gestures – e.g. British ‘Victory‐sign’ and ‘Thumbs‐up’, and American ‘OK‐circle‐sign’ (Morris, ); facial expressions – e.g.…”

Section: Theories Of the Origins Of Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

The origins of gestures and language: history, current advances and proposed theories

et al. 2019

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Investigating in depth the mechanisms underlying human and non-human primate intentional communication systems (involving gestures, vocalisations, facial expressions and eye behaviours) can shed light on the evolutionary roots of language. Reports on non-human primates, particularly great apes, suggest that gestural communication would have been a crucial prerequisite for the emergence of language, mainly based on the evidence of large communication repertoires and their associated multifaceted nature of intentionality that are key properties of language. Such research fuels important debates on the origins of gestures and language. We review here three non-mutually exclusive processes that can explain mainly great apes' gestural acquisition and development: phylogenetic ritualisation, ontogenetic ritualisation, and learning via social negotiation. We hypothesise the following scenario for the evolutionary origins of gestures: gestures would have appeared gradually through evolution via signal ritualisation following the principle of derived activities, with the key involvement of emotional expression and processing. The increasing level of complexity of socioecological lifestyles and associated daily manipulative activities might then have enabled the acquisition and development of different interactional strategies throughout the life cycle. Many studies support a multimodal origin of language. However, we stress that the origins of language are not only multimodal, but more broadly multicausal. We propose a multicausal theory of language origins which better explains current findings. It postulates that primates' communicative signalling is a complex trait continually shaped by a cost-benefit trade-off of signal production and processing of interactants in relation to four closely interlinked categories of evolutionary and life cycle factors: species, individual and context-related characteristics as well as behaviour and its characteristics. We conclude by suggesting directions for future research to improve our understanding of the evolutionary roots of gestures and language.

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“…Then, it may be that British English authors and editors are being influenced by American publications and the language used therein. Indeed, some studies have found a general ‘Americanization’ of English across the globe [12, 13], meaning that the various varieties of English used across the world are becoming more aligned with American English. Finally, it may be that average British users of Twitter are more resistant to the change.…”

Section: Methods and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

English verb regularization in books and tweets

Gray

Reagan²,

Dodds³

et al. 2018

PLoS ONE

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The English language has evolved dramatically throughout its lifespan, to the extent that a modern speaker of Old English would be incomprehensible without translation. One concrete indicator of this process is the movement from irregular to regular (-ed) forms for the past tense of verbs. In this study we quantify the extent of verb regularization using two vastly disparate datasets: (1) Six years of published books scanned by Google (2003–2008), and (2) A decade of social media messages posted to Twitter (2008–2017). We find that the extent of verb regularization is greater on Twitter, taken as a whole, than in English Fiction books. Regularization is also greater for tweets geotagged in the United States relative to American English books, but the opposite is true for tweets geotagged in the United Kingdom relative to British English books. We also find interesting regional variations in regularization across counties in the United States. However, once differences in population are accounted for, we do not identify strong correlations with socio-demographic variables such as education or income.

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Mapping the Americanization of English in space and time

Cited by 76 publications

References 40 publications

The dynamics of norm change in the cultural evolution of language

The dynamics of norm change in the cultural evolution of language

The origins of gestures and language: history, current advances and proposed theories

English verb regularization in books and tweets

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